City’s fake policy hides disappearing housing at the Colonial and Seaview Hotels

2049rosler_housing — Martha Rosler, “Housing is a Human Right” (1989), Times Square, New York

This month more buildings were added to the list of disappearing affordable housing in Vancouver. On May 1st the Colonial and Seaview hotels were privatized, with rents now scheduled to increase significantly in the coming months. For two years the buildings were run by the Portland Hotel Society on a non-profit contract with the private owners. According to the new building manager of the Colonial Hotel, the $375 rent in the 170 units is now scheduled to increase by a minimum of $50 in smaller units and “exponentially more” for larger units.

In August, the Flint Hotel will also be privatized. However, none of these changes will be registered by the city as reductions in the low-income housing stock. The city claims to adhere to a “one for one” housing replacement policy under the Zoning and Development By-law. The policy gives the appearance of maintaining the number of low-rent units by maintaining a stable number of SROs across the city. However, the number of SROs does not reflect how much affordable housing is available since an SRO is not defined on the basis of affordability, but rather on the basis of size. Dramatic rent increases in formerly low-income buildings are not measured as “losses” so long as they remain “designated” buildings under the city’s SRA By-law.

The Lotus Hotel at Pender and Abbott, for example, which currently falls within the “SRA” category, is undergoing renovations and will be opening in the coming months at market rates far out of reach of the low-income residents formerly living there. The same is true for the American Hotel, Burns Block, and countless other private hotels that have undergone upscaling due to gentrification.

At least one current resident of the Colonial Hotel has already decided to move out despite not having found alternative housing. Others will be forced to leave because their rent allowance will now be less than rent itself. They are are also not making proper prevention steps to reduce pests. In such situations, you can take the help of a pest control okc like Insight pest solutions, which will help in the reduction of pests and provide you guidelines to prevent them in the future. You can also contact pest control puyallup, which will provide the best solution to your problem and provide excellent customer service. There are also other environmentally friendly and healthy pest control services like Pest Control Burlington that will help you out in this situation. Eviction is also now more likely because the new management explicitly does not believe in harm reduction and have stated they will toughen their approach towards residents who use drugs. When asked about his eviction policy, the new building manager at the Colonial replied, “my boot.”

Not only do the numbers of SROs fail to convey the affordability of the housing, but also its quality and adequacy. The residents of the Colonial live in sub-standard living conditions sharing the three bathrooms on each floor with twenty other residents, and the only kitchen is to be shared between 140 residents. The building is in a state of decay with constantly leaking pipes and miniscule, closet-sized rooms regularly infested with cockroaches and bedbugs. This is not unique to the Colonial but the reality of the majority of SRO’s in the DTES. Nonetheless, these buildings absolutely must be maintained at affordable rates until other housing is built. They represent a last resort for the people whose only alternative is the street.

The upscaling of hotels like the Lotus, Colonial and Seaview is taking place within a larger process of neighborhood change. A recent study released by the Carnegie Community Action Project, “Pushed Out” (2010), found that the number of hotels renting at welfare rates has decreased to 12% from 29% the year before. These trends show that the interests of private owners are simply not compatible with the needs of low-income renters, yet the city routinely sides with owners over renters.

Rent control without loopholes is needed to ensure that SROs remain affordable. Not only are current regulations full of loop-holes, it should also be added that if owners have enough money, they can buy their way out of the “one for one” by-law altogether. If the owners do not themselves have enough money to pay the fee, investors and speculators are increasingly closing the gap. When an investor or an SRO owner’s interests coincide with the city’s – for example, in Gastown where the city’s “revitalization” policy strives to make the neighborhood better for tourism, consumption and business – the conversion fee can be decreased at the discretion of council and even waived entirely.

Inadequate rent controls, combined with the false appearance of “one for one” replacement policy, hide the actual effects of gentrification and “revitalization”: the increasing precariousness of the people who pay month-by-month rent in Vancouver’s low-income hotels. Only by questioning Vision Vancouver’s illusion of progress can we fight for an actual progress that takes into account the needs of people.

6Comments

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1

Kim Hearty on May 26, 2011 at 9:39 am

Thank you for shedding light on the deceptive ways our city council is actually contributing to the housing crisis. If only everyone knew.
2

Ivan Drury on May 26, 2011 at 10:17 pm

Thanks for the article that points out the problem with the city’s SRO / low-income housing count: they don’t count rents and rents are the biggest factor in the loss of housing affordable to low-income people. The Lotus is now renting at $625-$800, the same as the New Columbia, and these units are still counted by the city in the same batch as those renting at welfare and pension shelter rate.

Just one point of caution: These hotels were not privatized and the low-income community in the DTES did not lose 156 units of “social housing” at the American. We lost low-income affordable housing and, in the case of the American, we lost SRO units because they became self-contained, but it did not go from non-market to market.

It’s slippery, but these units were never out of the hands of private landholders who are concerned with fair turnovers for their investments (profits). Vision did not enable their profiteering off the backs of the most vulnerable in the city by privatizing formerly non-market (state held) units of housing, but by helping along a surging gentrification that is powered by the capitalist real estate market and its band of merry developers.

In all these cases Vision has helped the gentrification process along either through direct collaboration (as with the American Hotel conversion, which they could have denied), rewarded it (as with the upzoning of building heights in Chinatown to sweeten the reward pot for investor-speculators), or encouraged (with tax breaks and other high end business “revitalization” incentives).

It’s important, I think, because although the “social housing” units in the 50 hotels the Province bought before the Olympics are nearly as deplorable as the market SROs that are still in the hands of real estate investors, they are (so far) secure against these kinds of shifts that you describe in this article. At this point, I think that non-market security against terrible rent increases is the only identifier for “social housing.” We need a new word.

– Ivan
3

Mariner on May 27, 2011 at 9:26 am

Painful to hear about the impending rent increases at the Colonial. Worse even to hear about their attitude towards eviction amongst these, some of the most fragile and in-need folks on the Downtown Eastside.
4

Nate on May 27, 2011 at 4:12 pm

Hey Ivan,
Thanks for the comments.
Just to clarify, there’s no claim that the American was privatized, that was a reference to the Colonial and Seaview hotels. Those hotels were being withheld from the private market through the management of a subsidized non-profit, so I think it is accurate to say that the hotels have now been privatized. I also didn’t claim that 156 units were lost, although I did say that 156 new social housing units were promised (the property manager says as much in the video I linked to).
Best,
n.
5

Ivan Drury on May 27, 2011 at 8:37 pm

Not to split hairs, and I want to assert that I really think is is a good and important article and should be spread further, but I think it might be more correct to say that the Colonial and Seaview were “subsidized” housing units under PHS management. The property was never socialized.

The reason I think it’s important is because if social housing started getting privatized we would be in a lot of trouble. We ARE in a lot of trouble, but the socialization of property is one of the protections we’re seeking against the market and so far it’s a relatively safe (though very minimal) demand.

Ivan
6

justin on June 1, 2011 at 9:08 pm

As much as I am against the idea of rent prices increasing for the flint, colonial and seaview… We shouldn’t make it seem like these are buildings that have been social housing for ages and are now being converted to private market housing. These buildings were always private, up until a little over a year ago, and PHS was given management rights, and now it’s going back to what it was.

Bottom line, is that BC Housing needs to stop fucking around by taking over management of buildings that are already low income, and simply build real affordable housing.

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